Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Israel Votes to Exist

You’d swear that Benjamin Netanyahu was Mephistopheles in
disguise and had magically wangled a victory by hypnotizing the whole Israeli
electorate! The New York Times, the Washington Post, David Axelrod, Barack Obama,
are all mystified, their panties in a twist over Netanyahu’s landslide triumph!
It must have been electoral chicanery! Dishonest sleights-of-hand! Netanyahu must
have cast an alchemist’s spell on the Israelis! He must be in alliance with….Satan!
He must have channeled Shirley MacClaine! The Iranians must have engineered Netanyahu’s
victor! Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank were duped into voting for him!
Or something!! It was a result of climate change! Martians stole the election
for Netanyahu!

Call us Harvey Wallbanger! We don’t get it! We did our best –
we, the Obama administration – did our best to scuttle this arrogant man’s bid
for continued leadership, and interfered in Israeli politics by backing his
opponents, we poisoned his wells and poured sugar into his gas tanks – but he
won anyway! It’s not fair!

That Israelis wish to continue to live and not be
sliced-and-diced by a Palestinian state and overrun by hordes of Muslims who
love death more than life – this is a notion alien to the New York Times and
other anti-Israel entities. The Israelis voted for a man who stymied Hamas in
Gaza last year and who is in earnest to preserve the Israeli state and protect
it from harm or destruction.

Something we Americans can't say about President Barack Obama.

Jodi Rudoren, writing for the New York Times on March 17th, in “Netanyahu
Soundly Defeats Chief Rival in Israeli Elections,” expressed the Gray
Lady’s anger and senility over Netanyahu’s victory by penning a vicious,
petulant lead article that reads like a back-fence gossip rant. In her “objective”
report on the election results, she accused Netanyahu of “offending” voters,
resorting to last-minute “scorched-earth” tactics to snatch victory from the
implied jaws of defeat, (implying that he was doomed to defeat), of insulting
Arab voters, by calling Netanyahu’s campaign “divisive” and “racist,” by
insinuating that the coalition government he might form is destined to querulous
dissolution, and that his Likud party is a “right-wing” party (ergo fascist,
can you hear those marching jackboots now?).

From the capitals of Europe, to Washington, to the West Bank, to
the streets of Israel, even while his critics said Mr. Netanyahu had reaffirmed
his reputation as a cynical, calculating politician, it appeared that his
approach succeeded in drawing votes from other right-leaning parties.

But along
the way he angered the president of the United States with a speech to Congress
and infuriated European leaders eager to see the peace process move ahead to
create a Palestinian state.

David Axelrod, President Obama’s former senior adviser, said
Tuesday evening on Twitter that Mr. Netanyahu’s last-minute stand against a
Palestinian state might have helped ensure him another victory. “Tightness of
exits in Israel suggests Bibi’s shameful 11th-hour demagoguery may have swayed
enough votes to save him. But at what cost?” he wrote.

Here we will cast some first stones. Netanyahu
is a “cynical, calculating politician,” and Obama and his crew are not cynical,
lying, duplicitous power-lusters? He angered Obama with his well-received
speech to Congress, but Obama never angered Netanyahu with his snubs and his divisive
rhetoric? David Axelrod’s crystal ball didn’t quite predict the scale of Netanyahu’s
victory? Neither he nor Obama is a fork-tongued “demagogue”? I’m surprised that
Kershnermarch didn’t solicit Bill Ayers’s opinion of the Netanyahu victory, and
also Joe Biden’s, just to add more “authority” to her screed.

To excoriate Netanyahu with all these
slimy, desperate character assassinations is to excoriate any and all Israelis
who voted for life.

Kershnermarch continues her spiel:

In
interviews with the Israeli news media that Mr. Netanyahu usually shuns, he
complained of a conspiracy of left-wing organizations funded from abroad and
foreign governments out to topple him.

And
in a seemingly desperate bid to rally support halfway through the balloting, he
went on a tirade against Israel’s Arab citizens. “Right-wing rule is in
danger,” he said. “Arab voters are streaming in huge quantities to the polling
stations.”

He
said they were being bused to polling stations in droves by left-wing
organizations in an effort that “distorts the true will of the Israelis in
favor of the left, and grants excessive power to the radical Arab list,”
referring to the new alliance of Arab parties. Opponents accused him of bald-faced
racism.

And why shouldn’t Netanyahu have
mentioned the influence of the Arab-Israeli vote? Come 2016, should no one
mention the Obama-contrived illegal immigrant vote “Voters
in Nazareth Cheer Gains by Arab Alliance,” Diaa Haididmarch waves pom-poms
for the Arab-Israeli voters:

Choruses
of beeping horns echoed through this Arab city in northern Israel as word spread that
an alliance of Arab parties had received 14 seats in the next Parliament, making it the third-largest bloc.

Long-divided
Arab parties’ forming a coalition was unprecedented; so was the size of their
new bloc, offering a good reason for Nazareth and other Arab towns to rejoice.

“This
is a great achievement,” said Ahmad Tibi, a veteran Arab politician who was
elected to Parliament on Tuesday, speaking at the alliance’s headquarters in
Nazareth. Men and women cheered and waved flags bearing the alliance’s slogan,
“The Will of the People.”

“We
will have before us great challenges. We will fight racism, we will fight
fascism; we will defend our rights, regardless of the government,” he said.
“Today, we are stronger.”

So, what is Tibi’s definition of
racism? Would it include the kind regularly expressed by Muslims against Jews
and other non-Jews? What is his definition of fascism or Nazism? The kind the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was friendly to with Adolf Hitler?

Haididmarch repeats the tropes from
the main and featured columns in the New York Times:

In
any event, Arab parties have never joined governing coalitions, not wanting to
be seen as complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories in the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The New York Times, in just that one
sentence, claims that the geography and history are settled: Israel is
occupying what was once a genuine political entity that was also a
multicultural, diversified country, steeped in peaceful coexistence; that is,
it existed in the rose-tinted glasses worn by the doddering Gray Lady.

A
Senate panel is investigating whether the United States government is funding
efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a
report published Saturday.

The
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is reportedly probing the
funding for OneVoice Movement, a Washington D.C., group that includes an
organization seeking to oust the current Israeli government.

Fox
News reported Saturday that OneVoice, which has recently received $350,000 in
State Department grants, may have provided money to its subsidiary, the Victory
15 campaign, which is based in Israel and is opposed to Netanyahu.

One wishes Netanyahu hadn’t left the
gloves on when he obligquely referred to Obama’s efforts to sabotage his reelection
efforts.

There
is a huge international effort, with major money, that is partnering up with
leftist organizations here and also with media figures in order to bring down
the Likud government that I head," Netanyahu told Channel 2 television on
Saturday, according to Reuters.

Illinois
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R) said the State Department funding granted to a group
lobbying against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “a big, huge deal
and warrants some deep investigation.”

OneVoice, a
501(c)3 organization, partnered with anti-Bibi campaign committee V15, which in
turn partnered with 270 Strategies — a political consulting firm with more than
a dozen staffers who were in leadership roles in President Obama’s re-election
campaign. One of those is Jeremy Bird, who served as national field director
for Obama’s 2012 campaign and was reportedly working in Israel to defeat
Netanyahu.

Kinzinger told Fox “this is a huge, huge issue.”

The State Department denies that OneVoice
had any role in the Israeli election, and that the group was funded before the
election was called.Right. As though
its minions and managers, who are supposed to be seasoned veterans of politics
and political campaigning, were ignorant of any chance that a new Israeli election
would be scheduled. Any individual who is a current or former Obama employee or
associate is automatically suspect of being up to no good and a practiced
dissimulator.

Netanyahu’s reelection is arguably very good
news and should be a reason for others to be encouraged. Despite Obama’s best
efforts, the man he despises has thwarted his plans to arm-twist Israel into
non-existence, to bully it into a suicidal submission to Islam.